With how much can one start trading?
It all depends on your broker of choice, and their minimum requirements.
Some brokers will let you open an account with as little as $10 dollars, others will require substantially more.
Start smaller. You’ll lose at first, and you can mitigate that with tiny accounts.
That depends on your decision. I guess everybody has his own opinion. I started with 1k.
However. The more capital you have, the better you can use leverage or/and different trading strats. Like fading in or out with several trades. That’s almost impossible with a small capital where one trade is already at the edge of your risk.
Just look that you do not invest all of your money into forex. Use 10% or less in the beginning if you are discovering forex.
The amount you start with is the amount you can set on fire without it impacting your life in anyway. Pay no attention to anyone saying more money will give you more opportunity with strategies. That really doesn’t make any sense as sound money management is the same whether you have 10 bucks or 10 million bucks.
Forex is to be used with your “homerun” money and nothing less than that.
It is a simple fact that you can not open 5 trades if you play a multi currency strat with a mini account on say 1k of capital without risking more than 1% of your account size.
This clearly illustrates the limitations your broker has over you. There are brokers that allow you to choose your unit size, even as little as 1 unit. Therefore, money management is completely in your control and whether you are trading with 5 bucks or 5 million bucks, there should be no difference.
Well, not everybody is playing with demos or pennies. Plus most brokers give you minis or micro lots down to 1k minimum lot size. Anyways: Even if you just wanna start with pennies, a multi currency strat or some other strats require more capital, because you can’t open 10 trades with the same risk as just one trade if you go to the limit what your broker allows as minimum lot size.
Then the solution would be to find a better broker. The worst advice I think anyone can give a new trader is what amount they should start with. It is and should only be a nominal amount until they have proven themselves a successful trader. So yes, they should start playing with pennies. And they should be with a broker that allows complete flexibility on the amount they put at risk.
Over 70% of traders lose. And nearly everyone busts their first account. Why not let that account be for pennies. For the same way they lost pennies, will be the same way they lost thousands.
Just read precisely again what I wrote. I didn’t give advice with what to start with. I just stated whit what I started. And i can assure you I never busted any account! I just write from my side of view. For some pennies are the world, for some thousands are not that big deal.
The point with brokers is: You might find a broker where you can play with pennies, but then you might have some other limitations. Look for transaction costs for instance for a money transfer overseas. It’s not that easy. Unfortunately there is no one broker solution for all. It would be nice if that would be the case, but it simple isn’t. Oanda for example has those nano lots, but even then not with all opportunities. Plus somebody might like to trade in other time zones, where H4 is different. At least I wrote already there is a limitation with every brokers lot size minimum.
That’s why I wrote it’s a thing of opinion (and circumstances) and there is no one size fits all solution. Plus then look at the school and they mention also a minimum amount. That has reasons! They might lay beyond what you experienced, but it’s a little cheeky to give advice to not pay attention what I wrote, don’t you think so? Do you believe you are Mr. superman with the singular truth around the world? I guess the reader can for himself decide what postings are relevant for him and which are not.
I did read precisely what you wrote. Your post clearly suggested that one should trade with more capital. And your rationale behind it was that they would then be missing out on trading strategies. My intent was to clearly debunk that notion.
And I do disagree with Babypips minimum recommendations as well. Granted I have not been through the school in years, but as I recall I think they recommended an amount in the tens of thousands. When the average family in the US can’t even come up with two thousand dollars liquid cash, caution should be on what information is provided.
Your “advice” could have resulted in someone believing they needed more capital or they might miss out. I hope now you at least understand that is not the case.
I’m no Superman. But I do clearly understand sound money management.
LOL. Sorry to say that, but you seem to have a distorted reception today. I did NOT write that somebody should* trade with more capital. Just read again. *should is a word I did in fact never use in this thread and I use very rarely in other occasions. Look at your own posts and there you can find a lot of it. Maybe too many that you get confused of who did write that?
Whatever. Just for the record. You came up with a rude attitude against the reader what he should do or not do and that is the point I am claiming here. Another point and fact is that you can not trade with the same risk with several trades/some strats if it goes beyond the limit of a brokers minimum lotsize. No matter if pennies or thousands. If you deny that, then this has nothing to do with sound management. Exactly the opposite is true. At least let me tell you that it doesn’t matter if you blow 100*10 bucks accounts or one 1000 bucks account.
And that’s it for today regarding a discussion with you. Have a nice day!
Thanx guys.I get the picture.
IMHO, it would be better to start with smaller capital and trade smaller lots. Of course, it won’t give me much, but I can be prety sure that I won’t lose my funds after a few hours